


land of enchantment

by sweetwatersong



Series: girls and wolves; both have sharp teeth [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Gen, Magic, Thor (2011) - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-06-15 07:42:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15408249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetwatersong/pseuds/sweetwatersong
Summary: New Mexico: Where the desert meets the sky and a part of Underhill has always remained. Even fairy tales can be tested for a hypothesis, after all.





	land of enchantment

Seeking out traces of magical leakage from Underhill after centuries of reported absence may be mad, but Jane has the data. If it's anywhere, it's here, in the most magic-soaked town in all of the western United States. It's possible. It's even probable. It's not "tedious," no matter that Darcy insists as her intern witch that it's up to her to make judgement calls on how fun magic-related studies are. If there's one thing Jane knows, it's that her studies are worth the time and patience.

That doesn't keep her heartrate from skyrocketing when Darcy's head snaps up and her eyes begin to scan the next quadrant of New Mexico wasteland to be studied. Before Jane can begin to brake her intern has slammed open the van door with a shouted "Let's go let's go _let's go!_!" It's only after a moment that Jane throws the van into park and follows, cords trailing and sensors beeping unevenly behind her until, just as abruptly as she began, the younger woman slams to a halt.

"What? What is it?" Jane's double-checking that the handheld meter she grabbed out of instinct is recording everything, _everything_ , because they haven't reacted to anything for the last twenty-four weeks. There's what might be the faintest blip on the monitor, but -

"Well. It was here, and now it's not," Darcy drawls, staring at the horizon.

"What? But that - it was here, right?"

"Yup. But I’ve got nothing. Whatever was making that signature, it isn’t here anymore,” Darcy repeats with a shake of her head. The desert is open and empty in front of them, as flat as the graphs on Jane’s screen.

Jane shakes the meter, just in case her hasty soldering has come loose. “Well it can’t just disappear."

Given that they spend the next five hours combing over the quadrant and turn up nothing else, apparently it can.

*

“Lunch!”

“Hm?” Jane looks up from the lines of marching numbers only to lean back as Darcy drops two plates with sandwiches onto the table in front of her. “Oh, thanks. When did you make these?”

Darcy pulls out a chair and drops into it with her usual half-hearted posture. Her sandwich oozes liberal amounts of blackberry jam, peanut butter, and something white and sticky. Maybe marshmallow fluff? Jane hadn't even known they had that in the kitchen. “While you were daydreaming about the data,” replies the young witch cheerfully. “Meals are obligated in my contract, and I figured you hadn't thought about mundane human needs in a while. Eat up!"

Jane eyes the sandwich in front of her dubiously before her stomach rumbles loudly, reminding her that she hasn’t eaten in – huh, seven hours. A first, cautious bite reveals the contents to be simply jam and peanut butter – the only things that should be in a PB&J – and the taste, for a moment, takes her home again. In a way, it's a little bit of another kind of magic.

*

“Holy shit,” whispers Darcy as the hair on the back of her neck visibly rises, then, “Holy _shit._ ” She grabs Jane’s arm and yanks her back towards the van, never pausing to answer Jane’s indignant demand of “Darcy, what that hell are you doing?” For all her apparent softness, the witch’s fingers are iron bands that refuse to loosen when Jane tries to resist. “Darcy-“

A heartbeat later a dull roar shakes the ground under their feet. It’s a reverberation that begins far, far off, but when Jane twists her head around to look back, feet stumbling after her intern, she sees a furious cloud of dust billowing towards them – and nothing but the storm. The horizon has simply vanished.

“Oh my God!”

They barely make it behind their van before the wind crashes into them, the grit and sand caught in its teeth raking grooves in the paint finish with shrieks. Jane instinctively turns her face into her jacket and closes her eyes, shutting out a world that has gone dark around them. The only sign she has that reality hasn’t simply vanished is Darcy’s hand, still locked around her arm, which tightens with the distant sound of coughing.

Ten agonizing heartbeats later the sandstorm vanishes, as suddenly and inexplicably as it began.

When Jane wipes enough dust out of her eyes to open them, the tawny greens and tans of the desert are muted with a new layer of dust. Clouds of it shake off of Darcy’s hair as the intern wheezes and pulls her glasses off with a grimace for the grime coating the lens. 

“Well, as glad as I am that that’s over, I really hope these didn’t get scratched,” she comments in a rasping voice. “Third pair in two years which, let me tell you, is super bad luck. Not to mention killer on the pocket money.”

Jane blinks owlishly herself before she rises, sand falling from her clothes. It’s habitual at this point to ignore Darcy’s nervous babbling. It’s even easier in light of the unexplained phenomenon they’ve just been a part of.

“What the hell was that?”

“I don’t know, because the only thing that makes sense is an opening to another realm.” Despite Darcy’s efforts her glasses aren’t much cleaner when she slips them back on. “I have no idea. I’ve never felt anything like that.” She shudders convulsively. “It was… Terrifying.”

“An opening?” echoes Jane. “You mean, a portal? That’s impossible. I mean, just the power released must have been enormous to effect the physical world like that. Fluctuations that big would have registered on any equipment, let alone my scanners -” On that thought she wrenches the van door open, digging frantically into the coils of wires and blinking lights.

“I wonder what could have come through,” Darcy mutters ominously. “Aw man, and I just got this scarf, like, three weeks ago.”

“Go see if there are any indications left!” Jane’s muffled voice orders from the depths of the van.

“Seriously, I have a bad feeling about this.”

“Just go look!”

The silence is reassuring as Jane checks her gauges, scanning for spikes in the electromagnetic field during the past half hour. If it was a magic-induced gust and not some freak meteorological event, there would have been some kind of build-up beforehand…

Engrossed in the science, she barely glances up when Darcy’s hushed curse floats back.

“Holy fuck.”

Jane hums, mind elsewhere.

“Um, Jane?”

“Yeah?”

“You need to see this.”

“It’ll still be there in a minute, let me just-“

“Uh, it’s less of an ‘it’, more of a ‘him’.”

She pauses, staring at the homemade ley line detector in her hand. Then, disbelieving, she climbs back out of the van to follow Darcy’s footprints around the other side of the van. 

It’s easy to see what has caught her intern’s attention when she gets there. Rising from the midst of the blasted sagebrush, dressed only in a pair of leather pants and wearing the most caveman-like scowl Jane’s ever seen, a broad-shouldered man growls at them.

“And what realm is this?” He demands belligerently. Distantly she’s impressed; there’s actually a sneer in the words themselves, not just a pasted expression accompanying them.

“Uh.”

“Yeah,” Darcy agrees.

“Wow.”

“This is a poor jest, Father.” Tall-and-Fair takes a long step towards them and Jane realizes that, all things considered, he’s actually not that far from them. “What lesson am I meant to learn from such tricks as this?”

“Do you think he-“

“I’m really trying not to think right now, thanks. Because if he did...”

If this stranger came through a portal, that would mean he is very definitely not human. In fact, that would make him – Fae.

Holy _fuck_ , Jane echoes silently.

“I see no point in this foolishness,” the maybe-Fae in question snarls. With no attempt to hide his hostility he strides over the scoured ground towards them, one hand rising even as Jane flinches – until Darcy, whose fingers have been gesturing subtly at her side, flicks a gleaming spark at his bare chest.

The electric ball melts into a fantastically defined six pack. At first the man just smirks at them and Jane starts to grab Darcy in a bid to run for it. Then, as her own hand wraps around Darcy's arm, the man abruptly shudders. His arrogance turns into puzzlement in the split second before another spasm sends him sprawling unconscious on the ground, muscles contracting in waves from the spell.

Jane, jaw dropping, glares at Darcy.

“What?” says the witch defensively. “He was freaking me out. And besides, I wasn’t even sure it would work on him.”

Looking down at the blonde man and the intricately burned patterns in the ground behind him, Jane tries to gather her thoughts.

“If he’s Fae… it shouldn’t. What is he?”

But the stranger, unconscious at their feet, has no answers to give her.

Yet.

*

“Okay, you’re awake.”

Thor groans, aware at first only of the ache in muscles still tight from recent battle. No, there has been no battle; there had been instead his father, and some forsaken desert realm… and a Hel-cursed enchantment, cast by a meager slip of a thing.

That thought is enough to bring him to full consciousness. The stiffness in his limbs stokes the fury that's quickly rekindling inside him as he pushes himself up onto his elbows. A feeble spell, used against _him_ \- The targets of his rage are foolishly nearby when he manages to open his eyes, watching him with wide and wary gazes.

“How dare you attack a son of Odin!” It is less a bellow and more a snarled outrage at the ache in his gut. Ignoring the protests of his strained muscles, he forces himself to sit upright. “For such an insult, your very lives will be forfeit.”

“Wait a minute,” the bare-faced one begins as he pulls his feet under him. Whatever she might attempt to say in her defense is lost. The other one’s hand flashes up in a swift movement and once more throws a glowing orb at him. For a moment he still expects it to dissipate, to splash against his defenses and vanish. 

It does not. Instead the world dissolves around him and he falls into blackness.

*

“Please don’t move.” An exasperated voice weaves through his fading haze of unconsciousness. “We really, really don’t want to shock you again.”

“You know we could always just leave him here.”

“Darcy!”

“What? You want to ride back to town wondering which of us he’s going to try strangling next? Six credits are pointless if I’m dead, Jane.”

This time Thor lies still as he comes fully to. Odin has often said that a warrior should never go charging blindly into battle. For all the evidence to the contrary, Thor does listen to his father, even if Fandral jests that he never cares what the cause of the skirmish should be, only that there is a fight to be had. 

The events of the past day are clear and undeniable, even if they have taken a bewildering turn towards the end. He had thought this place a minor realm of Underhill his father banished him to; a trick to teach and frighten him without putting him in harm’s way. But the taste of the arid wind, the rough absence of magic against his skin, the oddness of the realm’s inhabitants and their actions – and moreover the twinge above his breastbone that recalls vividly that unfamiliar spell – all speak to the fact that he is in a realm so far removed from Underhill that little trace of it remains.

Or –

He opens his eyes to see an impossibly blue sky above him, bright and hard and endless.

“Let’s try this again. Hi.”

Thor attempts to push himself up as he had before only to be brought up short. His hands have been bound before him this time, negating his attempts to use them. When he uses sheer muscle to pull his torso upright instead, wincing at the protest of his abdominal muscles, it becomes apparent that the two women have knotted some sort of patterned fabric around his wrists.

The women in question are seated on the back of the horseless carriage; far enough away, Thor notes, that he cannot reach them easily. The spell-caster is munching on travel rations of some sort, eyeing him suspiciously and alternating her bites with sips from a strange flask in her hand. The sight unexpectedly reminds him of how parched his own throat is. He wets his lips unobtrusively and instructs his body to ignore the thirst. He has, after all, dealt with worse.

And yet if that is true, why does he feel oddly vulnerable?

The other woman is watching his face with keen eyes, a mixture of emotions dancing across her expression. “Look, we don’t want to keep knocking you out, so can you just – not attack us for a minute? Something really weird is going on here, and we can’t figure out what it is if you’re lying there drooling again.”

“I-” The sting of the insult is overridden by his groaning muscles. It is a sufficient reminder that there is, as she puts it, something ‘really weird’ about this hard, blue world. “I apologize,” he says slowly, letting his ingrained reluctance in admitting such a thing be hidden by drawn-out speech. “You have nothing to fear from me.”

“Yeah right,” snorts the spell-caster. Again Thor’s pride is pricked, his anger stirred. He reins it in with a rough control, aware that there is more that needs doing than avenging a slight from so minor a source.

“Truly. I… did not mean to harm you.” At the younger one’s disbelieving noise he grits his teeth and amends the statement. “I meant to cause alarm, not harm. I was… disoriented after my arrival.”

“Arrival?” Like a hound catching the scent the older woman leans forward. “Where did you come from?”

“Answer me this,” he counters. “Where are we?”

“New Mexico?” The spell-caster glances at her companion as she offers up the unfamiliar phrase.

“Earth,” the bare-faced woman says intently, her own brown eyes locked onto Thor’s. “You’re on Earth.”

For a moment the word does not make sense. The journey between Underhill and Earth has been impassable for High Fae for generations; his presence in such a place is impossible. Thor opens his mouth to refute her – and the vast emptiness of this desert asserts itself, enveloping him in the echoing sensation of a space stretched far and wide without air or sound to fill it.

He reaches for his magic, for the part of him that has been there for as long as he can remember, unconscious and innate and undeniable. Reaches, and –

“Are you okay?” The older woman asks, startled. Thor does not, cannot answer her, remaining doubled over as his chest aches with a sensation as cruel as if a Jotun speared his heart and ripped everything else away with it.

No wonder his mind has skirted around it. No wonder his thoughts have not turned to his innate magic from the moment he suspected foul play. No wonder he reached for the women with hands instead of spells. His body had already known what his heart could not fathom.

“It’s gone,” he manages to say, the leaden words cementing his loss.

His magic is gone.

Somehow he is incredibly, terrifyingly, utterly mortal.

*

Events and speech blur together after that. There are names – “Darcy, witch.” “Jane, not a witch.” – and faces, and a watershed of events he is nearly too numb to focus on until his worsening thirst drags him from his fugue.

“Water.” It is a broken whisper, a harsh croak. He swallows and tries again. “Water?”

The spell-caster – Darcy – purses her lips but fetches a flask out of the carriage. He drinks it sloppily, the stark reality of his plight lost in the pure bliss of cool water; when the vessel is drained he slips back into a detached daze. But he remembers enough, when she skirts around his legs to take the flask from him, to offer it back with the hands they have left bound together.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she replies warily, but scoots away slower than before.

The women debate in the background, referencing tools and metal-wrought items he has never seen before. “Portal” and “Fae” and “confirmed” drift by his ears without note until Jane says, with exasperation, “We can’t just leave him here. He could be the first person to cross a portal in centuries!”

“He could also decide to go back at any time. Do you want to crash because a sandstorm swallows up the entire desert again?”

Thor does not have the words to tell them that here, now, and as mortal as he is, there will be no bridges back to Underhill. There will be -

His mind cuts away and fades out again. Their voices babble around him to become an almost comforting buzz, forcing away the silence he is sure will consume him soon enough.

“Our van has an iron-based frame, I don’t even know if there’s a car in Puente Fuego that we could borrow to drive him out of here-”

“Here,” the witch instructs him, “hold this compass.”

He complies.

“Darcy!”

“What? It’s only got a tiny bit of iron. If he is one of the Fae, this should tell us whether or not he can even get in the van. See? He’s fine.”

“…okay. I wasn’t expecting that. But if he’s not Fae…”

At last they usher him gingerly into the so-called ‘van’, settling him in the seat beside Jane. After their entry the carriage splutters to life and moves without apparent propulsion as if it embodies a strange form of mortal magic. For all that he knows, it might. As it bounces over the brush-filled terrain Jane steers, Thor breathes, and Darcy watches them both carefully. He cannot find the energy to tell the witch that she need not worry. Indeed, he can barely focus enough to notice the mountains that race past the windows are edged not in the ivory snows of his homeland but faded tans and greens instead.

It is shock, perhaps, every bit as real as the kind that cripples warriors during battle and steals away lives like a thief. In its embrace Thor has hold enough on his wits only to watch for unlikely signs of treachery from the two mortals. The rest of his mind drifts like a ship on the great oceans of Underhill, violet and teal in jeweled hues, sweet on the tongue and bitter on the skin. The oceans, perhaps, that he will –

His mind tries to turn from the thought but at last, grieving, he forces it back.

The oceans, perhaps, that he will never see again.

He is mortal now, as fragile as the women sitting around him, and there will be no return to Underhill. There can be no return for a High Fae who has become human, however royal his blood. It is a truth as old as Underhill.

 _Father,_ Thor howls silently, _Father, how could you do this?_ There is no answer.

He does not expect one.

*

“Hey,” Jane asks when they’re halfway to town. Darcy is valiantly trying not to doze off in the back, convinced their mystery man is going to attack them again. At first Jane agreed with her. Now, seeing how zoned out he’s been since waking up again, she’s not so sure. Maybe it’s an after-effect of using a portal, and isn’t that an interesting thought? “Are you okay?”

His slow movement to look at her is sharply at odds with his earlier lightning reflexes. It’s not an act, not unless it’s an incredibly good one. There’s a glazed air to his blue eyes that she is familiar with, that she recognizes from seeing in the mirror years ago. Her own reflection looked like that the day she prepared for her father’s funeral with her mother’s pearls around her neck, her unruly hair tucked strand by strand perfectly into place. 

But he’s only come through a portal; what could he have possibly lost?

Puzzled, Jane watches as he blinks and searches for words.

“I am not.”

The question slips out before she can stop it – not, to be honest, that she wants to. “What are you?”

“Lost,” he tells her at last. She thinks of mourners in a black line stretching out the door, of handshakes and condolences falling on distracted ears, and says nothing more.

*

“Erik!” Jane pushes open the glass doors. Behind her Darcy snickers.

“Oh, this is going to be good.”

“Erik,” she calls again, ignoring her intern. At last a frazzled head appears around the corner leading to the kitchen.

“Jane?” asks her mentor with no small amount of confusion. “I thought you were supposed to be gone the whole afternoon.”

“Yeah, well, that was before we came across a major portal.”

“You - what?” Erik steps into the ‘Science Room’ as Darcy has christened it, a hand towel slung over one shoulder and a spatula in hand. “What did you find?”

“Him,” Jane says, gesturing to the man who has obediently entered the gas station behind her, defying once again all expectations that the iron in its building would stop him.

Erik’s face is priceless. Fortunately, Darcy snaps a picture of it on her iPod.

*

“You brought him back here? Jane, what were you thinking? A strange man, let alone a possible Fae, could have easily killed you! And Darcy!”

“You know what? He tried, and failed. Twice. And he hasn’t tried since then, so can we just focus on the-”

“He what?”

*

Little manages to fight through his haze in those first few hours. He is questioned first by Jane then Erik, at once relentless and uncertain. They exchange glances more often than not and eventually retreat to another room, return to their own counsel. Thus left alone the fugue state that swallows his thoughts and swaddles the world in muffled silence is free to devour Thor entire. Such grief is not unknown among the High Fae, where songs are sung by tongues strange and wondrous of those lost to life and time in their agony. To experience it here, in a mortal form and a reality away from all he cherishes, proves a greater torment than the Fae Prince – the now-human man – has ever known.

And still, even as his heart aches under his breastbone, he is keenly aware of its labors. The blood that flows through it is precious now in a way that it never has been before. There is so little of it, contained with this mortal frame, and the knowledge carried in those stories and songs terrifies him now with how easily it is lost.

He has already lost enough; he cannot lose any more. Even if he knows not what he has that could be lost now, when he has nothing.

He does not count on the curiosity and kindness of mortal strangers.

“Here.”

Thor slowly draws his focus back to the present. It is a fight now, harder than many he has waged in the past, even out of the sight of that impossibly blue sky. He looks up as the spell-caster - Darcy - settles into a chair next to him and places a plate with unfamiliar sustenance in front of him.

“It’s a sandwich. As long as those two are arguing,” and a jerk of her thumb in the direction of the other room indicates who she is referring to; indeed, raised voices still echo around the corner, “we’re not going to get anything fancier. The only thing left in the cabinets is Chef Boyardee and Jane’s threatened to fire me if I eat her stash of it because grocery stores in the middle of nowhere, New Mexico, apparently don’t believe in carrying it. So, PB&J it is.”

He does not respond immediately, taking the moment instead to study this mortal who still views him with wariness but sits close enough to knock her knees against his own. She seems a work in contradictions, as does the other – Jane. Even the warlock, angered in defense of his charges, still allows him to remain out of sight. They are confusing and incredible, even in the little that he has seen of them. Is this what it is like to be a mortal?

“And for the finishing touch....” Darcy does not seem perturbed by his silence. Perhaps his confusion will play to his aid, rather than his destruction. She leans easily back and grabs a mug of some white liquid from the counter, placing it beside the plate. “All right, eat up. You must be starving by now.”

Thor glances down at the alien food neatly arranged before him. There are rules about food in Underhill, for the giving and the taking and the debts incurred. He would have rather made the meal with his own hands in a habitat that has been carefully cultivated over his long lifetime and stringently enforced. Yet Darcy seems to desire nothing but his compliance, his satiation of a hunger he has barely noticed. If there are rules for mortal food, he has never learned them.

Perhaps it is time to begin.

He lifts the sandwich carefully, aching in mind and body, and takes a first bite. It tastes of summer, and sweetness, and a world made new for him.

*

“We should turn him into the Council.”

“What? That’s a terrible idea!”

“And why exactly is that?”

“People who go into SHIELD don’t come out. You know that as well as I do. Better, even!”

“Jane, it’s their job to deal with things like this.”

“We don’t even know that he is something they’d deal with.”

“Two minutes ago you were arguing that he was some kind of Fae. Now you’re trying to say he’s not. You can’t have it both ways. What’s gotten into you?”

“Look at him. He can barely understand a word we’re saying. Erik, ever since we pulled him out of the desert, he’s been practically comatose! He’s our only real lead on anything relating to the High Fae in centuries. Human or not, whatever SHIELD would do to him would be terrible.” Jane takes a steadying breath. “He came out of the nearest thing to a major portal to Underhill in recent history. We’re not the only ones who would want answers. We just have a better chance of getting them without leaving him… broken.”

“Have you looked at him recently?” Erik’s eyes are resigned. “I think ‘broken’ might be the best word for him anyway.”

“We’ve all been there,” she shoots back. “And I’m not giving up on him.”

“Honestly, Jane, what do you see happening here? You said it yourself, he’s not even speaking. Maybe SHIELD is the best place for him to go.”

Jane sets her jaw, ready to continue the debate, before the voice of the maybe-Fae drifts through the door. It's the first time he's spoken since his cryptic "It's gone" remark and she can't help but turn, listening as if caught in the rough notes of his voice.

"It is... strange."

"Wait 'til I put Fluffernutter on it," Darcy's voice replies easily, and Jane and Erik watch through the doorway as the stranger eats his sandwich slowly, more life in his eyes than she has seen in hours.

*

“Once you rinse it off you can put it in the drying rack or grab a hand towel.” Darcy indicates the wire frame beside the small sink. “Since we don’t have that many towels, I usually just toss them in here.”

The price of his meal, it appears, is cleaning the utensils and crockery Darcy has used. Thor attempts to follow her directions to place the plate in the frame with sudsy hands. It would seem this is incorrect; white bubbles drip from his fingers to dot the porcelain, leading the spell-caster to shake her head and pull it back out.

“Nope, no good. The bubbles will dry and then everything will taste soapy, and Erik’s cooking is…” She makes a face. “Already not at the best to begin with. Haven’t you ever washed dishes?”

He considers the question, fighting to fold through memories his heart will not let come too close. The lives of the High Fae are long, his earliest years clouded with the passage of time. If ever he performed these chores in such a manner, it was centuries ago.

“No.”

“Huh.” The young witch peers up at him through her odd seeing-apparatus for a moment. “Well, there’s a first time for everything. Let me show you where all of this goes so you can put it away when it’s dry. Jane doesn’t notice if it stacks up to the ceiling, but let me tell you, Erik does.”

There is no unkindness in her expression or words. Indeed, there is only the sense of the many questions she is keeping locked behind her lips. In this time and place that is no small gift.

“I appreciate it." He is careful, treading around the words forbidden in the courts of his kind, the debt that weighs on immortal lives. But he is mortal now; he has eaten mortal food, held iron, walked a land that has not seen Fae since he was born. Perhaps there is a first time for this, for him. But not yet. Not now.

“Of course.” She flashes a grin at him. “Did you think I was going to do them when I have you here to do them for me? Besides, nobody’s ever thanked me for teaching them how to scrub forks before.”

It is not for the lesson, but Thor lets her assumption and his own worries rest.

*

That night the man – Erik – casts a ward around the threadbare couch that Thor sits upon, holding the blanket and lumpy pillow he has been granted for his rest. “What if he needs to go to the bathroom?” Darcy asks mulishly before she shushed by Jane, who apparently knows this battle has been sufficiently won. The women awkwardly wish the two men goodnight and depart for their own quarters elsewhere.

Only when they have left does Erik settle onto a flimsy cot himself, one bleary eye still on Thor. In short order the warlock slips into sleep, snoring fitfully – but his ward glows a steady and luminescent white around Thor’s resting place. It is strangely comforting in a way Thor thinks Erik neither expected nor intended. Although the spell is meant to keep him in, it could seem to keep the rest of the world, with all its troubling truths, out.

Thor lies awake for a brief time after that, staring at the stars faintly visible beyond this dwelling place. In his utter exhaustion his thoughts are proving clearer than they have in a great deal of time. These stars are not the constellations of Underhill; they are not the links between the realms his father and his kind rule over. Yet they shine nonetheless, beautiful and distant, and he falls asleep in a circle of peace that holds through the dark, empty night.

*

The night after that he spends surveying those same stars with Jane, unable to speak of Underhill without loss gripping at his bones. But of magic and machines they can converse more freely, more animatedly, and in time her fascination drives away the fog that would threaten to drown him. The night after that he attempts to reclaim his heritage, alerted by the words of a resident in the dusty village, only for the iron of Mjolnir to rebuff him, mortal though he is.

After that comes another tale indeed, and it is a story - the first one in centuries - that both mortals and High Fae learn together, sung in human halls and Underhill, and written in a science lab on the edge of the desert where Fae inscriptions and microchips trace the long, bending arc of history towards the promise held by magic and machines.


End file.
